Crazy
by Simone Robinson
Summary: "-Kakashi never knew where the voice in his head came from. Maybe it was Obito. Maybe it was Minato or Sakumo or the Sanin playing silly buggers. Maybe it was an old, long dead part of himself. He didn't know. Didn't care.-" Kakashi contemplates scars.


**C **r a z y

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They were almost intoxicating. The scars. Everyone had them. There was not a Daimio's daughter who had not fallen some time in her life and scraped her knee and left behind an ugly, white mark.

They ran across the skin like a map of hardship and triumph. Pain and sadness, happiness and adventure. They told the stories that words could never say. That actions could never convey. That the eyes could never express and lips could never feel.

Kakashi's hands were mapped with scars. He examined them, the skin standing out a stark white in the darkness. His mask lay forgotten in the corner, piled beside his vest. His gloves lay forgotten on the floor too.

It felt wrong to not be wearing them. It felt wrong to cast off something that had become part of his skin. Part of his soul.

He supposed his scars were a little bit like that too.

He traces circles on his palm with a long, thin finger. Years of work and hours of training had built up a thick skin. He could feel the calluses and bumps and ridges. He began to feel for his scars. Seeking them out. Years of scars from testing his own weapons and stopping enemy weapons. He could feel the long, thin scar that cut across his hand. It was newer. Fresher. But still years old. From the first C rank mission with his Genin team. He could remember that day so clearly. As he traced the scar, he could feel the painful throb in his heart as he had that day, watching his students go up against the demon of the mist with no back up. He could feel the painful crush of water against his lungs as he fought the desperation to shout out their names in his panic.

It was a miracle any of them had survived.

But they had, and he could remember the day he buried his enemy, and traipsed back home, walking across the Great Naruto Bridge.

He could remember the first swell of pride he'd allowed himself to feel in years.

He turned his hand around, examining the other side. Here his skin was so white you could barely see the pink traces of scars against his skin. He traced a finger over them. It danced against the ridges and cracks. It danced against the joys and pains of his life.

He remembered the days when he could not look at himself in the mirror. When each glimpse sent him reeling. His nose, his lips. The set of his jaw. All his father. All his father. No. No. He couldn't look like him. Couldn't have the genes of a failure. Of a coward. What kind of father left their only son behind?

He'd been too young. Much, much too young for a blow like that.

Kakashi sighed.

All his father. Even his eyes. Especially his eyes. Glinting with the hard, cold facts of being a ninja. Images of his father's body. Images of his father's blood. He never had gone back to that house. He'd never once been to where it had happened.

Those scars were the scars of a desperate, frightened boy trying his best to end the flashes and images. Trying to smash the mirror and his hands into a bloody pulp, so that he could feel something other than this terrible, terrible regret.

Kakashi missed Minato.

He missed his teacher.

He missed the man that had raised him where he father could not.

The man who had trained him from the tender age of five years old, when Minato was but a young prodigy himself. The man's carefree smile, his tactical excellence that had lead to his rise as Hokage, his annoying firmness.

The optimism that came through in his only son, Naruto.

He traced a thick scar that wound his wrist. A dark moment. The moment when he'd stroked the baby Naruto's hair, and hoped and prayed that this child would not grow to hate his own face as well. The moment after he'd clung to Minato for the first and last time. The moment after his Sensei had walked into battle.

The moment he gave his life.

"Idiot…" Kakashi smiled with a fond remembrance. _Idiot indeed. You passed that one down to your son, Sensei. Your brilliantly talented, idiot son._

Kakashi had always been so easily annoyed as a young man.

With Obito, for example. He was always late. Not a day went by, not an appointment, not a meeting, not a mission, not a training session when this was not the case. Obito had made it his goal in life to be as late as possible to all things. With the accompanying, pathetic excuses.

This was a fact that was certain to never change. It was a constant in Kakashi's unstable, shifting rollercoaster of a life.

And that was a comforting thought.

And that on itself, annoyed him.

_So like to be annoyed at love and comfort and stability, isn't it? Weakness, isn't it?_

Kakashi never knew where the voice in his head came from. Maybe it was Obito. Maybe it was Minato or Sakumo or the Sanin playing silly buggers. Maybe it was an old, long dead part of himself. He didn't know. Didn't care. If he was hearing voices, it hardly mattered who it was. Just proved that he had finally gone crazy.

_You've been crazy for a long time._

He didn't answer.

Minato was always there. Kakashi could remember the nights sitting in his room, seething as he tried to work out a way past the sealing charms around the windows and doors. But he was a genius and they were full proof and Minato would not let him train again to the point of exhaustion.

It was annoying how his teacher never left his side. Trained him. Raised him after his father died. It was annoying that he cared. It was even more annoying that each time Kakashi caught site of his face, and smashed the mirror and his hand to a bloody pulp, Minato would be there to pick up the pieces.

It was annoying that Kakashi needed him so much.

The scars on his fists annoyed him too. They barely stood out against his white skin. But he knew they were there. So he wore the gloves. Because these were not scars of battle and honor. These were scars of a frightened child who looked just a little too much like the father that left him behind.

Rin was annoying. That skilled little girl, who was too clean and too fresh and too nice to ever make it as a Ninja. It annoyed him that she would harden, so he hardened his heart towards her and left her cold during her advances.

She would change too.

They all did.

And that annoyed him.

Obito had annoyed him too. More than just his lateness. The very presence of a comrade. He cared. Kami knew he did. He just hadn't known it until he was pressing himself against a rock. And Obito had just lay there. Between a rock and a hard place. And Kakashi had sobbed and cursed and hit the ground. He'd begged and pushed.

But Obito had died in the end, and Kakashi was left with his eye and another reminder.

Another scar through the tissue of his cheek.

Another deep, scratched out wound in his soul

"So foolish…" He muttered to himself, and stood with a slow, stiff movement, "Shit. Gai is going to have my ass if I don't start training again." He chuckled softly, picked up his mask, picked up his gloves, pulled them on, and ran a hand through his hair.

_You made it through another night, Kakashi._

He shrugged, "For now." He moved into the kitchen, grabbing some cereal. It was almost time to visit Obito. Visit the memorial stone.

_You should visit his grave sometime._

"Maybe I will."

_No you won't._

"Oh?"

_No. Because there's nothing there, is there?_

Kakashi's sharingan burned.

* * *

**Musings of Kakashi Hatake. **

**What did you think?**


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